“If you had said … Boris Johnson will become Prime Minister; there’s a pandemic, and he passes these strenuous laws that mean people can’t leave their houses, but the address that receives the most fines in the country is 10 Downing Street; and he’s replaced by Liz Truss, the cheese woman who crashed the economy, who is outlasted by lettuce. Even I would have said: I find that implausible.”

Ben Stewart of the activism group Led By Donkeys is reflecting on the chaos that has ensued in UK politics since they plastered a badly aged quote from David Cameron onto a billboard in Stoke Newington in London after Brexit had torn the UK in two.

With no awareness that the 24-hour news cycle would soon make the satirical comedy The Thick of It seem unimaginative, the group (whose name is a play on the World War 1 phrase ‘Lions led by donkeys’) came into existence in 2018 with no grand plan to be an ongoing organisation; they just felt a sense of purpose to help the UK public grapple with the misinformation stemming from the messy Brexit negotiations.

“We were forever doom-scrolling through social media in despair at the lies, exaggerations and promises made by leading Brexiteers,” Oliver Knowles recalls. “We decided just to go out and hold these people to account, starting with David Cameron’s infamous Tweet from the 2015 general election discussing a choice between strong and stable government with him or chaos with Ed Miliband, which Ben and I turned into a billboard as an experiment.”